Spiceworks has released a report sponsored by Cox Business which examined the impact of the IoT on the IT industry. Called ‘The Devices are Coming! How the ‘Internet of Things’ will affect IT and why resistance is futile,’ the report compiles the responses from 440 IT professionals from North America and EMEA.
The report also collated the forecasts for the size of the market, noting that Gartner predicts 26 billion IoT devices by 2020, IDC forecasts 30 billion worth $8.9 trillion, and Cisco estimates 50 billion devices by 2050 worth $14.4 trillion in 2022. Although all three suggestions vary, they all point to an additional strain on the IT networks in offices and public environments ‘ a topic we broached in our Intercede piece last week.
The report’s informal and advisory tone warns that ‘before you know it, IoT will be invading your network and capturing resources that are already overwhelmed by ever expanding user and data requirements.’ We’ll dive into the key findings below.
Firstly, most respondents agree that IoT will ‘impact consumers in addition to the workplace. In fact, the vast majority believes the trend will pose significant security and privacy issues.’ Secondly, ‘more than half say they aren’t doing anything specific to brace their infrastructure for the coming impact of IoT.’
Thirdly, ‘despite the divide between belief and targeted action, our survey found that many IT pros are already doing things that’ll help support IoT ‘ even if they aren’t thinking of them in that context.’ The report also warns that the IT professional should be doing more to prepare.
It notes that ‘in a realm already burdened by other trends like BYOD and big data ‘ and their effects on bandwidth, connectivity, security and storage ‘ the added impact of IoT is going to require an IT strategy fit for the future.’
71% of respondents thought IoT would impact both consumers and workplaces, 25% thought it was mostly a consumer trend, and only 4% thought it was mostly a workplace trend. When asked if they were preparing for IoT in the workplace, 59% of respondents said they were not, 29% said they were and 12% said they didn’t know.
An explanation for the divide between recognition and response is that 86% of respondents said they were wary of security and privacy issues on the network. As such, there were widespread cautious approaches to handling IoT devices in corporate environments, reported by those interviewed.
43% of respondents said they would assign a separate network for the connected devices and 8% said they would not add the devices to the existing corporate network. Only 23% said they were going to add the devices to the network, and 26% said they didn’t know what they would do.
However, the report concludes that many of the approaches adopted by the industry are laying foundations for IoT introduction. Prevailing fears about bandwidth usage means that many companies are already looking to upgrade their network capacity to accommodate increased data usage, which will also accommodate the increased levels of traffic generated by connected IoT devices.
Laptops and smartphones were the first devices that system administrators had to accommodate on corporate networks, more and more ‘things’ are now being connected to the networks.
Not including the laptops and smart phones, 58% of respondents reported that they had video equipment such as security cameras connected to their network, 43% had electronic peripherals like projectors, 35% had sensors like RFID badge readers, 31% had physical security systems (locks, gates), 29% included controllers for lights and environmental controllers, 23% had connected appliances, and finally 13% had connected wearables ‘ showing that the IT sector is almost unknowingly a front-runner in the connected workplace.
Spiceworks notes that these devices will begin generating data that companies could use for analysis, but that many professionals underestimate the volume of data and the capacity required to store it ‘ an issue complicated by the fact that 67% of respondents will only use on-site storage and 40% never intend to stray from this method. The cloud-centric big data players may have quite the fight on their hands to win over those prejudiced against off-site storage, but the benefits derived from the analysis may well be enough for most companies to make the switch.
The authors add that ‘sensors and beacons are increasingly used to gather customer and employee data ‘ data the IT pros are not used to storing. Especially in machine-intensive environments like hospitals, the amount of data flooding in could be epic.’
As such, the report recommends upgrading the storage infrastructure now before the anticipated data explosion arrives and requests to join networks overwhelm capacity and cripple productivity.
‘The way to arm your infrastructure for IoT: one IT decision at a time, with your eye on the galaxy beyond. But don’t take it too slow; someday soon your boss is going to cruise into your office and ask you to admire ‘ and support ‘ his Google Glass, and it would probably be a good idea to have an action plan.’